Defense lawyers said yesterday that charges based solely on DNA cheat the justice system, while other legal experts heralded the groundbreaking indictment as kicking off a new generation of crime-fighting.

“What they are doing is cutting corners, and once you start doing that, the system breaks down,” said lawyer Joseph Tacopina.

Lawyer Gerald Shargel said the indictment “flies in the face of conventional jurisprudence. It’s a fiction created to defeat the statute, and I have my doubts whether it will survive.”

Shargel said judges could also throw out DNA-based charges because such charges deny defendants their right to a speedy trial.

But others called the reliance on DNA evidence a legitimate weapon in the war against crime.

“This is a courageous move and a wonderful development,” said forensic scientist Lawrence Kobilinsky, a professor at John Jay College.

Officials who announced the indictment yesterday said they were acting now because the statute of limitations was about to expire on one of the rapist’s earliest attacks.

Kobilinsky predicted that from now on, the statute of limitations “will cease to exist” in cases with DNA evidence.

He said law-enforcement officials should take the next logical step and indict known suspects based on their DNA instead of their names.

“Hundreds of people can have the same name, but only one person can have the DNA,” said Kobilinsky. “If the genetic profile is so much better, why not use it?”